


Sing You to Sleep

by Starlithorizon



Series: In the Sun [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Female Sherlock Holmes, Femlock, Friendship, Gen, epic bros forever even if Sherlock's a woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-16
Updated: 2013-05-16
Packaged: 2017-12-12 00:29:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/805007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlithorizon/pseuds/Starlithorizon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock soothes John's nightmares with her violin; he soothes hers with lullabies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sing You to Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> This is very (very) loosely based off the idea of John singing lullabies to Sherlock as presented by 221b_hound in "Silence and Lullaby." It stuck with me and turned into this.

It had never happened before Sherlock left, not once. Despite the horrors they had seen together, it had only happened to John.

Now, with the return behind them and more than a few happily solved cases, John was quite often woken with screams. Well, not _often_ per se, as Sherlock hardly slept like normal people, but nearly every time she _did_ sleep, she awoke with screams.

Usually, they were just shrill, wordless cries of terror.

She screamed John's name entirely too often, though, and he knew exactly what she was dreaming about. He'd been faced with dreams of her falling from the roof of St Bart's for years, and now, here she was, haunted and alive.

Before, when John had been the one hurtling to consciousness with memories of bullets and sand and fallen men, Sherlock had played him back to sleep with her violin. They never acknowledged it; she simply swept through melodies like lullabies in the sitting-room, and he just let them wash over him like a balm.

John had no real musical capabilities. It had been so long since he'd played that clarinet that he couldn't even really remember how to read music. But, he had to admit, her violin had served as a major source of inspiration to the kind doctor.

The fifth time he had woken to his flatmate's cries and ascertained that it was due to a nightmare, he sat up in his bed, cleared his throat, and sang. It was really just a shaky, somewhat tone-deaf rendition of "Don't Fear the Reaper," but it seemed to be enough. He listened in the quiet of the night and just barely heard her lie back down and sigh peacefully.

As the years went on and each was faced with nightmares, Sherlock and John continued this unspoken tradition. Sherlock played gentle, delicate pieces on her violin, and John sang in an uncertain voice, lullabies threading through the silent flat. Never, not once, had either of them said a word about it, but it had gone on and on, well into their Sussex years.

Once, while John had a woman over, he'd woken to Sherlock's nervous little sleep-cries from below. He did as he always did in this case. He gently disengaged from his lover's arms, wrapped a dressing gown around himself, and slunk downstairs to get himself a glass of water. He took a sip, cleared his throat, and sang an old Scottish lullaby to his desolate friend. Usually, it just took one song to get her to relax again, but tonight was a bad night.

For the first, but not quite only time, John walked into Sherlock's room and felt around the moon-hushed darkness for a chair. He was stopped, though, when she made a noise. A _whimper_.

Sherlock was an indomitable force, a tsunami and wildfire all tangles up in the shape of one willowy woman. She was arrogant and brilliant and entirely too human, but so rarely was she actually _afraid_. John, her healer and friend, felt his heart lurch. He took a few cautious steps forward until his knees brushed the softness of her mattress. He sank down on the edge of it, pleased when Sherlock quieted a bit.

He sang for what felt like hours, but really it was only about twenty minutes. Within those gentle, song-filled moments, he'd stretched out beside Sherlock, mumbling the words to "Blackbird" until they broke off and he fell into sleep.

* * *

The woman upstairs had not been pleased to find John in Sherlock's bed. Though he'd only woken to their backs touching, a constant point of reality for the pair of them, the woman (what was her name? Janie? Margaret?) had been livid.

This hadn't been the first time someone had assumed he and Sherlock were shagging, nor would it be the last. It wouldn't even be the first (or last) time John had been found in bed together. Usually, that was out of practicality (he had lost count of the hotel rooms offered up with single beds for him and "The Missus." Eventually, he just gave up, as they were cheaper anyway), though sometimes, like this time, it was from easy friendship and the need to perpetuate love through touch. Not everyone understood their dynamic, and that was fine.

John didn't try to placate or calm the furious woman whose name he didn't remember. He simply squinted up at her with bleary eyes, shrugged, and said that Sherlock needed him. He barely stayed awake through the three different slamming doors.

Sherlock stretched out a bit, pressing more of her back against his, and drifted back to sleep like that, flatmate's warmth radiating out like fire in a grate.

**Author's Note:**

> I love female!Sherlock, especially in relation to a distinctly not-female John. I like playing with their dynamic that way, it's just so much fun for me. Can't stop, won't stop.


End file.
